ETNA'S OUTBURST.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 776, 28 March 1910, Page 7

ETNA'S OUTBURST.

LAVA ADVANCING ON BOLPASSO. PANIC-STRICKEN PEOPLE. FIVE NEW CRATERS ACTIVE. By Telegraph—Press ABEOciation-Copyriebt (R<!c. March 27, 5 p.m.) Rome, March 26. Mount Etna's violence iB increasing, and five new craters aro now active. Crowds of tourists aro watching tho advancing lava. Many religious processions are parading tho streets in tho neighbouring towns, and tho churches aro crowded with panic-stricken people, praying that further disaster may be averted. The craters are hurling stones like volcanic bombs. A later report,states that the lava is advancing at the rate of a metre (39 inches) a minute upon Bolpasso, and Cardinal Nava has taken the miraculous veil of Saint Agatha to stop tho flow. [St. Agatha was born of an illustrious family at Catania, in Sicily, and was tortured and martyred there in A.D. 251, -under tho Emperor Decius. _ She appears in art as a majestic virgin, crowned and veiled, a clasped book in tho right hand and a palm or. pair of pincers in tho left.]

PREVIOUS ERUPTIONS. Mount Etna, one of the most celebrated of the world's volcanos, is ■ situated in the East of Sicily. It is an isolated cone, 10,840 feet above the sea level, with a base of 90 miles in circumference, and cut off from the mountains to the north by the valley of the Alcantara, and from tho range .to the south and'west by the basin of theSemeto or Giarretta. Eastward its base.reaches to the sea. Its eruptions are recorded from'an early period. Thucydides mentions three which had happened since the establishment of the Greeks in the island; the second, which seems to have been of unusual violence, being referred to 476 B.C. Shortly before the Christian era successive eruptions had.made the dis-trict-on the east side of Etna uninhabitable and almost impassable from want of .water;. There were important outbursts in 1169,' when lava destroyed Catania with 15,000 of its inhabitants, in 1329. 1408, 1444, 1447, 1536, and in 1669, when the lava again reached Catania. Among the last violent eruptions were those of 1852, 1865, 1868, 1874, and 1879. On the side facing the sea is a capacious amphitheatre, named tho Val del Bone. It is fivo miles in diame-

ter, and hemmed in by "dykes," of from 500 to 3000 or 4000 feet high, displaying several hundred regular strata of darn lava, alternating with bedß of tufa of an average thickness,of six feet. The surface of Etna is divided into three regions—(l) The desert, including the crater-bearing cone, the highest part of which is covered with snow during eight months of tho year (2) the woody, richly clad with beech, . pine, oak; and (3) the cultivated, around tho base, producing in abundance, corn and wine, oil and Fruits. ; . ■— _ : _ • ' There is a great similarity in tho general character of tho . eruptions of Etna. Earthquakes presage the outburst; loud explosions are heard; rifts open in tho sides, of the mountain; smoke, Band, ashes, and scoriae aro discharged; the action localises itself in one or more craters; oinders are thrown out and accumulate around the crater in a conical form; ultimately lava rises through the new cone, frequently breaking down one side of it whore there is least resistance, and flowing over, the surrounding country. ■'~ Then the: eruption." is .at an.end...; Comparatively, few of the eruptions have been of.extreme' violence, while many havo been.of a slight and harmless character. According to Lyell, Etna is rathor older than Vesuvius—perhaps of the same geological age as the 1 Norwich Crag. At on the eastern base of the mountain, basaltic rocks occur, associated with fossilifurous . Pliocene clays. The earliest eruptions of Etna aro older than the Glacial period in Central and Northern Europe If all the minor conos and monticules, could be stripped., from the mountain, .the diminution of bulk would be extremely

slight. ■ Lyell concludes that,' although no approximation can be-given of the age of Etna ; "its foundations were laid in the sea in the newer Pliocene period." From the slope of the strata from one central point in the Val del Bono, he further concludes that there once existed a second greater crater of permanent eruption. Such.aro some of the facts in the history of a volcano, justly called "famoso," "immenso," "terribile," and which has excited the wonder of all nations in all ages of the history of the world.